


This Might Take A Little More

by expeanut



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: ASMR AU, ASMRtist Magnus Bane, Alternate Universe - Professors, Fluff and Crack, M/M, Not Beta Read, Professor Alec Lightwood, Professor Magnus Bane, Short One Shot, YouTuber Magnus Bane, and very obviously so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-02 01:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17878172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/expeanut/pseuds/expeanut
Summary: The crisis of continuing to watch his colleague’s videos without him knowing would keep him up at night if Magnus’s videos didn’t knock him right out.--Alec's been a fan of BrooklynASMR but can't handle himself with the actual Magnus Bane.





	This Might Take A Little More

“I’ve never seen you shy before.”

Izzy sounds awed, in that affectionate mocking way. She only ever does it to their siblings and he’ll only ever accept from his sister. Meanwhile, Alec is balking at her and the nerve to even _insinuate_ he’s being shy. He’s too offended by the whole thing to play along. Alec isn’t shy. He’s quiet and stoic but stern and admittedly grumpy, not that he’d admit that out loud. He isn’t shy. A gay mess, absolutely, but shy? Never.

“I’m not shy,” is all that comes out of his internal rambling.

“You made ‘maybe’ into a five-syllable word.”

He frowns. This might be the exact reason why he’s never tried to hang out with Izzy when she’s with Magnus or vice versa, but he won’t say that either.

Magnus had graciously asked him out for dinner at the 24-hour burger place near campus after Alec said he couldn’t go the Korean barbecue place before class because he’d smell like meat going to a lecture. _That_ was after Alec said he couldn’t have drinks thanks to catching up on midterm grading. He’s thoughtful like that, he thinks, frown deepening. If Alec’s everything else wasn’t screaming how interested he was in Magnus, the man definitely would’ve taken some sort of hint and left Alec alone. In a thrilling turn of events, he’s continued to very nicely ask him out. Alec’s turned him down every time, Magnus just as understanding each attempt, this round with a ‘maybe next time’ that managed to get fumbled by gay brain stall six ways to Sunday.

Talking to Magnus is the highlight of Alec’s day. Gone were the days where he couldn’t help a huge, dopey grin stretching across his face whenever he saw him, but it didn’t mean he was any less infatuated nor any less caught off guard by the man.

“I don’t know why you don’t just say yes,” she continues. She tips her head to the side, eyes widening like she’s realized something great. “Or, here’s an idea, asking him out yourself.”

“Maybe.” He says pointedly, like saying it right after the fact will save him. Izzy just sighs and gives him a pitying look.

An alert pops up on his phone screen, reading a notification from YouTube. Both he and Izzy see it though he turns his screen away before she can read the details.

“I gotta go, it’s… urgent.”

He runs off, but not before she can shoot him an unimpressed glare.

 

\--

 

The real reason he hasn’t said ‘yes’ to any of the dates stares in full screen, 1080p HD on his laptop. The video must’ve finished rendering when Magnus had left since it was popping up now. According to a post on the community page it refused to upload last night, but he’s glad it’s here now.

Brooklyn ASMR, one Magnus Bane, fades into view. He's the only person on this Earth that could make him ditch his sister to watch something called 'Salem Witch Wards Your Home from the Puritans ASMR.’ On screen he hums, eyes roaming around the frame of the video and past his screen into, for Alec, his office.

“Oh, the energy in here is just atrocious. I don’t know how you could stand them—it. I suppose inviting over a witch in these trying times might be dangerous,” he drawls. “Not that they’d know a real witch from a very talented cat, but I digress. Let me take a preliminary look before I begin my work.”

Alec thinks he should have some more shame and humility about this, and he does.

Magnus, often coined by fans as the Grand High Witch of Brooklyn thanks to a reference or two to _The Witches_ in his ongoing fantasy-based roleplay series, is without a doubt one of the best ASMRtists on YouTube. His videos were always well made, detail oriented, and featured Magnus’s charming personality and quick wit.

Alec met this Magnus before meeting real Magnus. Every academic needs a quirk, and Alec’s quirk is ASMR—its recent popularity aside. He swears it started with tame things like soap cutting and sand squishing and wax pouring. Watching ASMR was something relaxing to watch at the end of the day when trying to get to sleep. Though he didn’t tolerate much extraneous noise in his waking hours, he liked the quiet order there was to the videos. The sort of tame, satisfying way that things came together, calmly carving wood or mixing paint, was something simple yet pleasing in a way he can’t quite understand nor needs to figure out. The more initial negativity it gained, however, the more it intrigued Alec. The roleplays were the ones that got the most slack and he figured it wasn’t his thing and left it alone. After a trial run or two he concluded he was right.

Still, Brooklyn ASMR, who he’d been subscribed to for his elegant hand movements, calming voice, and the tendency to make his own shampoo, was always putting them out. Alec had thought fuck it and settled in. Six months later, here he is, holed up in his office and holding back laughter. While the other ASMRtists didn’t do it for him, Magnus definitely, definitely did.

Well, it helps that Magnus is well-spoken yet unafraid to poke some fun at himself and history as he does it. That, and he’s devastatingly gorgeous.

“...If they hadn’t been so intent on Native genocide to steal their land and resources, they might’ve been notified they’d been, well, _tripping balls_. But fine, a witch hunt is perfectly acceptable.”

He rolls his eyes but continues his “casting.” Graceful fingers fan out in a smooth, soothing motion. He used to think it was the frame rate, but now he knows it’s just the way that Magnus moves.

Because nothing in Alec’s life can be simple, it turns out that Magnus is brilliant offline, having earned a Ph.D. and conducting world-changing research on theoretical and applied physics. Most recently, said research has brought him to Alicante University. Where Alec works. As a business professor and therefore in a completely different college, but close enough that he saw Magnus strolling around with the other STEM-based professors and did a far too obvious double take. And of course, his sister is doing her own graduate course here, is friends with every STEM professor because that’s just the kind of person she is. And of course, now hangs out with Magnus which, means _Alec_ hangs out with Magnus.

They’re actually semi-friends now, Alec would like to think. If Alec had hoped he wouldn’t be just as charming and charismatic in real life as he is in his videos, those hopes were thoroughly squashed. In the interest of not coming off as even more socially incompetent than he already was, Alec never brought up that he watched them. In his defense, Magnus didn’t really talk about them and there’s no easy way to bring that sort of thing up.

The crisis of continuing to watch his colleague’s videos without him knowing would keep him up at night if Magnus’s videos didn’t knock him right out.

“So yes, it’s all basically the imaginings of children, drugs, and the troubling state of society. These poor women won’t be catching a break anytime soon will they?” He sighs. “But me, I am a witch. Magic is real.” Magnus winks at the camera before continuing to wiggle ringed fingers, the sound of metal clinking together nice rather than annoying. “People don’t know where to look, is all.”

He begins making wider motions with his hands to begin "warding" and Alec can feel his eyelids starting to droop. What’s essentially Magnus complaining about the Salem Witch Trials shouldn’t be as relaxing and cathartic as it is. That being said, he’s never been more thankful for the third-week lull in students bursting into his office, and he readily allows Magnus’s voice to calm him into a puddle on his office chair.

Three gentle knocks on the door snapped him out of his reverie. He purses his lips but tells them to come in, his right hand removing his earphones and starting to shut his laptop, the left smoothing over his desk. So much for his break, he thinks ruefully, trying to blink away the sleepiness.

“Alec?”

He can still see the video out of the corner of his eye. He can also see the real-life Magnus standing at his door, looking just as pretty but obviously no longer dressed as a Puritan-era witch.

Just like that, he’s wide awake. His simple motion of shutting his laptop turns into a startled slam, something that would have made him wince had he been in the right mind in literally any way. His earphones had tangled around his hand and rip out the audio jack in the process. To his absolute horror, a snippet of the video plays out into the silence of the office before the laptop properly shuts down.

“...It’s especially weak around the window—”

Everything slows down to a halt. For one delirious moment, Alec hopes that somehow Magnus doesn’t recognize his own voice in his own video that he probably took forever to edit, that the clip and the abruptness of the situation might not register with him.

“Um,” he says, dumbly. Alec has a doctorate, dammit.

He watches as he stiffens, unsubtly shifting his weight from one foot to the other. His tongue darts out to wet his lips and Alec follows the movement like he can’t help it. Magnus doesn’t seem to notice, instead looking to the ceiling.

“I see you found my videos.” Magnus sounds defeated. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think he was nervous. Magnus has famously been proud that he doesn’t get Asian-glow when he drinks but he’s bright red now. On the other than, Alec’s caught red-handed.

“So this is exactly what it looks like.”

Magnus starts to open his mouth to talk but closes it soon after, so he takes it as an opportunity to charge ahead.

“They’re really good, I’ve been subscribed for a good year.” Magnus’s head swivels to him sharply, and Alec takes a breath. “Uh, before you came here I’d been watching them for a while and then you showed up and I didn’t know you, still. By the time we were friends, it felt weird to bring up.”

“We’re friends?”

“Of course we are,” Alec affirms, bewildered by that part, of everything he just admitted, being the thing he picks up. “Or, I thought we were?”

“No, we are! I actually came to ask if I was coming on too strong and apologize for making you feel uncomfortable.”

Oh, Alec’s been a huge idiot. “I’ve wanted to say yes but I felt like I couldn’t do it without you knowing I watch your videos,” he blurts out. “I’m not uncomfortable at all. The opposite, actually.” There’s a beat of silence and Alec is sweating in his seat. He’s about to cut his losses and prep himself to sulk at Izzy’s about how much of a disaster this all is before Magnus is chuckling.

“You continue to surprise me.”

Alec tries not to laugh too, incredulously, because he could say the same thing about Magnus. “So you don’t think it’s weird?”

“No, Alexander.” Magnus is smiling. He’s so beautiful when he’s smiling it hurts. Something is squeezing in his chest, hard enough that he forgets not to dopily smile back at Magnus. The mirth in Magnus’s eyes turns into something softer and Alec kind of wants to reach out and hold him. “The beautiful man I like not only knows about my ASMR videos but likes them enough to subscribe and doesn’t think it’s strange? I’m unbelievably flattered right now.”

He takes stock of the situation. He’s finally gotten his secret off his chest, Magnus not only isn’t disgusted but very pleased, and he’s just told him that he finds _him_ beautiful, something that he’ll be thinking about for the rest of the day or week or month. Magnus just said that he _likes him_. With all the facts, he stands and comes around his desk so he can face Magnus. It means the other has to incline his head, and the movement fits him, first because his eyes catch the glint of the overhead lights, and second, because raising his head and standing tall is always a look that works with him.

“Are you free for drinks? I don’t have anything else for the day.” He does. He was supposed to meet with Jace and Izzy later, but his siblings will understand.

“I’d love to.”

Alec decides no one can give him shit about liking ASMR after this.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a weird one, huh? Idk shit about shit AND it isn't beta-read, so that'll explain... the quality lmao. I'm not happy with it but I'd rather get it out than let it sit.
> 
> I based this off of AngelicaASMR's "Salem Witch Cleans Your Energy {From the Puritans}" who I can't recommend anymore, and Goodnight Moon ASMR who I will always recommend, so if you like intricate ASMR RP videos you should definitely check her out! Anyways, thanks for reading.


End file.
